


It seems I won’t be able to stay an angel

by enmity



Category: Persona 2, Persona Series
Genre: Gen, High School, Innocent Sin, pregame, self-justification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 04:11:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14609019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: She’s found it isn’t so hard, not caring.





	It seems I won’t be able to stay an angel

**Author's Note:**

> when u joek about writing tatsulisa 4 times and u actually do it XD
> 
> continuation/2nd part/sequel/less straightforwardly cute take etc to [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14539179) so read that first i guess (there's oblique references so u know it's Real)... tatsulisa b/w their childhood & after lisa regains her memories is funny(tm) but also not funny at all

The dress is white, sleeveless with a hem skirting the border of decency. It isn’t her color – pause for irony – and it looks cheap, and it shouldn’t be the one object out of dozens that steals her gaze and makes her pause when she walks into the store, but Lisa finds herself staring at the display mannequin anyway, feeling a half-memory she can’t place or name rising like foam to the surface of her thoughts as she tests the fabric hesitatingly and lets it slip between her fingers when someone’s shoulder brushes hers.

She sweeps it all away the next instant with a graceful turn of her head and an absent smile, like always – like habit. It isn’t so hard, Lisa thinks, and smiles a little wider for good measure.  

“Ooh, that dress looks pretty nice. You’re going to buy that?”

It’s Miho. She and Mami had taken the bus with her to Central Avenue right after school let out, to take some pressure off their backs after the end of midterms. At least, that’s the pretense. Lisa, who’d nodded along to their invitation like it was natural, doesn’t remember a time when going out on the weekend had ever been anything more than an unspoken duty: duty to Mami and Miho, and duty to the men who owed her money in exchange for her company. She wonders, sometimes, if it might as well be the same.

Lisa doesn’t remember a time when she didn’t feel the pull of hesitation each and every time the corners of her mouth tugged into the crescent of a genuine smile.

Genuine, honest. She worries the corner of her lip – she doesn’t like those words. The real world has no use for a Lisa that’s genuine. She understands that well enough. Only one person…

_Forget it._

Lisa sniffs, primly, and fingers a stray lock of hair in a show of mild distaste. “As if,” she laughs, “You know white isn’t my color, Meeho!”

The other girl shrugs, “You’ve been staring at it for a while though. Should I get someone to take it off the display so you can try it on?”

“No, there’s no need. I don’t know what I was thinking – from afar, maybe, but up close it’s just a regular sundress. Silly, right?” She shakes her head, a forelock hanging free by one side of her forehead. “Maybe my vision’s weird. It doesn’t look like a wedding dress at all,” she tacks on and it sounds like an afterthought.

The last sentence slips out so throwaway, so close to an honest admission, that Lisa almost can’t believe herself. Her breath hitches, and something in her chest stings – like it does when she’s on the precipice of remembering something she’s convinced she shouldn’t, although she doesn’t know how or why; something strange and distant and painful that fades away as quick as it appears, like an old scar that clenches with remembered pain when you press around its edges.

Something like that.

“You’re talking weird!” Miho giggles, all good-natured, her arms crossed, and all of sudden it’s as if she’s put two and two together. She sidles up a little, ducking her head, “What, Lisa, you’re going out with someone?” which is the exact conclusion Lisa wants her to reach.

It’s easy enough to lie when they don’t pay attention to the things you say because you keep lulling them with evasive replies and laughter in the right places, and easier still when you know the reason they’re not listening is because they’re not even looking at your face more than half the time.

So Lisa’s face reddens – an easy enough quality to emulate; she’s had practice – and she turns away, looks at her shoes, because although lying isn’t a difficult thing at all, somehow she doesn’t quite trust her face not to give her bluff away immediately this time.

“Su— it’s Tatsuya, from class 3-B,” she says. The rest comes effortless after that: “I know he looks, like, _real_ cold, but we’ve actually been together for a while now… And when I walked past that white sundress I just couldn’t help, well, imagining…” Her voice dissolves into embarrassed laughter; she shrugs one shoulder, and smiles, and doesn’t look at the plain dress that had caught her eye and stirred a memory too far away to capture when she’d looked at it. “Well, a girl can dream.”

Miho places a congratulating hand on her shoulder. “I’m so glad! Really, you should’ve told us – I thought we were best friends! Does this mean I can tell Sheeba?”

She doesn’t get the dress, of course. She doesn’t even try it on. Not that it’d have looked good on her even if she had, anyway. She buys a handbag, a skirt; there’s a comfortable weight hanging by her left arm by the time the three of them exit the store and into a nearby cafe that sells sugary drinks the upper side of overpriced, but it’s not like she cares, because Lisa’s never cared. She doesn’t care. That’s why boys want her, why girls want to _be_ her, never mind how they seem to hate her in equally devastating measure.

And she’s found it isn’t so hard, not caring, not about the moral repercussions of dishonesty, or the things people say behind her back no matter what she does. Self-protection isn’t a bad thing. She isn’t a bad person, or, at least, she could certainly be worse.

Lisa stirs aimless circles into her drink as the two girls assail her with questions that she fields effortlessly. _I never knew_ , they say. _Although, in hindsight, doesn’t it make sense that you two would be a thing?_ She takes this all in with her drink and lets the smug feeling of accomplishment overwrite the guilt of lying.

Really, for what it’s worth, it could have been any one boy. Tatsuya just happened to be it, that’s all. Not her fault he’s tall, with a nice face, and that he’s too cool to care about the girls climbing over one another trying to corner him after school, which just makes her job easier, anyway – she already knows the reason he’s nowhere to be found after classes let out is because he doesn’t go to classes after lunch half the time, and she knows just as well where his hiding places are. So much free time sacrificed to follow him around … That’s just the power of a girl with a crush for you.  

So what if the first time she tried to talk to him he made the strangest face, and bolted out of the hall and hopped on his bike with a speed she didn’t know was humanely possible? Sometimes boys are just dense, but the thing is, Lisa’s never not been persistent. If no one wants her, if there’s no one who wants to be friends with her, then she’ll either become someone worthy of the sentiment, and, failing that, then she’ll just have to take it by force.

She doesn’t mind being an object to be admired and envied from afar, or an prideful ornament hanging by someone’s arm. It isn’t ideal, but it’s marginally better than what she was when she was a kid; rejected and alone, looked upon with unspoken suspicion at every turn. At least now she knows half of those looks are those of envy, of longing. She’ll never let go of that.

She thinks about all this as she parts ways with Mami and Miho at the crossroads, as she tosses and turns over her sheets and puts off a homework that’s due Monday. Surely, it won’t take long before she breaches Tatsuya’s defenses. Then maybe she’ll learn to like him, really and truly, and maybe he’ll learn to like her back and maybe one day the white dress and wedding bells won’t just be another lie she’s using as a stepping stone to attain her place at the top of the social hierarchy.

She tries not to think that maybe somewhere along the way she’s lost some part of herself that she can’t get back and replaced it with something cold and ruthless and dishonest, caged in brittle protection around her heart. She tries not to wonder if a girl like that is even worthy of anyone’s time, and then, finally, Lisa closes her eyes and sleeps it all away.

(She won’t think of the white dress again until months later, when Tatsuya turns and answers to her feelings with those of his own, and even through the reflexive tears she manages to tightly keep at bay at the knowing it’s not a future she’ll have with him, she’s by then long realized that it was never something she needed to be happy, after all.)


End file.
